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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Toshihide Takai, Tomohiro Furukawa, Hidemasa Yamano
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 9 | September 2019 | Pages 1164-1174
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1607136
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes evaluation results of thermophysical properties of stainless steel (SS) containing 5 mass % boron carbide (B4C) in its solid phase. First, the authors synthesized SS-B4C samples with emphasis on 5 mass % B4C and SS using a hot press method and then evaluated its homogeneity in several ways, such as chemical composition analysis, metallographic structure observation, and micro X-ray diffraction. This study also evaluated the density and the specific heat and thermal conductivity of the SS-B4C sample and found that the density becomes lower and the temperature dependence of the density decreased as the temperature rose compared to that of stainless steel Type 316L (SS316L) used as a reactor material. The specific heat became slightly higher than that of SS316L and showed similar temperature dependence up to 1073 K. Unexpectedly, the thermal conductivity became lower than that of SS316L and showed similar temperature dependence up to 1273 K.
